Xuanyan woke up late the next morning, his body still heavy, muscles aching in a way that lingered unpleasantly beneath his skin. He lay still for a moment, staring at the rough stone ceiling of the cave, watching thin cracks in the rock catch the pale morning light filtering in from outside. The cave was quiet—too quiet. No soft breathing beside him, no lingering warmth. Only the faint hum of the sect beginning another day beyond the stone walls.
His thoughts drifted back to his previous life, and the irony of it almost made him laugh.
Back then, he had been nothing more than unemployed trash by society's standards—a useless extra in a world that only respected productivity and results. Degrees meant nothing. Effort meant nothing. If you couldn't prove your worth in numbers, you didn't exist. One careless comment had been enough to push him over the edge, turning quiet depression into something heavier and darker. Not dramatic. Just suffocating. Day after day of existing without direction, without worth, without even the illusion of progress.
And now?
Now he was here.
Alive. Breathing. Standing in a world where opportunities didn't politely knock—they waited for those ruthless enough to seize them. For the first time in either life, the future didn't scare him. Even if he died tomorrow, at least this time it wouldn't be as a man who merely survived. He would live fully. Greedily. On his own terms.
Xuanyan let out a long breath, something inside his chest loosening as if an old weight had finally cracked.
Sleeping with Lingling had changed something inside him.
It wasn't just physical intimacy. It wasn't just release. The numbness was gone. The instinct to stay small, to accept mediocrity, to shrink himself until the world stopped noticing—it all felt disgusting now, like rot clinging to his bones. He didn't want to be average. He didn't want to scrape by at the bottom and call it peace. He wanted more—more power, more control, more presence.
He pushed himself up and began dressing, movements slow but deliberate. Lingling was already gone. Of course she was. Today was the Outer Sect Competition, and she wouldn't miss it for anything. As he fastened his robes, his gaze sharpened, his earlier languor evaporating.
From the very beginning, Hei Yuling had been one of the most important characters in the novel.
Not a protagonist. Not a final boss. Something far more dangerous.
She was the reason Ye Qingfeng hadn't died like an irrelevant extra during his early rise. The hidden hand that smoothed his path, redirected his failures, and quietly placed him in the right situations at the right time. When opportunities slipped past him, she ensured others appeared. When mistakes threatened to become fatal, she turned them into lessons rather than endings.
And later on, she became the key.
The bridge that connected Ye Qingfeng to nearly every remaining female lead in the sect, including the Sect Master herself. Yes—that kind of figure.
Today, she was overseeing the Outer Sect Competition.
On paper, her cultivation wasn't impressive—Qi Condensation Stage Nine, stuck at the peak and unable to take the final step forward. In another context, that would have marked her as a failure. But no one dared underestimate Hei Yuling. In this world, reputation mattered more than numbers, and hers carried weight. Heavy, undeniable weight.
She was a personal disciple of a Rank Four cultivator.
That single title granted privileges others could only dream of—authority without announcement, respect without demand, and the unspoken understanding that offending her meant inviting consequences far beyond one's imagination.
The reason she hadn't broken through to the Foundation Establishment Realm had never been a lack of talent.
If anything, it was the opposite.
Hei Yuling possessed one of the legendary physiques—rare enough to be recorded in ancient manuals and whispered about like myth. A physique so uncommon that entire sects had risen and fallen chasing replicas of it.
Unfortunately, it was still dormant.
And until it awakened, it acted less like a blessing and more like a curse.
No matter how much effort she poured in, no matter how flawless her foundation became, her cultivation remained sealed at the absolute peak of Qi Condensation. Like an invisible lock had been placed on her body, refusing to yield no matter how hard she pressed.
Meanwhile, the Sect Master's other two personal disciples had already stepped into the middle stages of the Foundation Establishment Realm.
The gap was obvious.
And to someone like Hei Yuling, it would have been unbearable.
Still, being stuck at a bottleneck between major realms wasn't unheard of in the cultivation world. In fact, it was disturbingly common. Most cultivators possessed trash-tier aptitude. Many never even brushed against the threshold of Foundation Establishment in their entire lives.
The previous owner of this body was proof enough.
Talented, but not enough. Persistent, but not favored. Doomed to rot at Qi Condensation forever unless he encountered a heaven-defying treasure capable of rewriting his aptitude from the ground up.
And those treasures?
Rare enough to be called miracles.
Of course, there were other ways to force a breakthrough.
Most of them were ugly.
Demonic techniques that burned lifespan like firewood. Methods that devoured sanity along with Qi. Shortcuts that turned cultivators into hollow shells, powerful but unstable, one misstep away from collapse.
Alchemy offered alternatives—but those were hardly clean either. Dangerous pills. Extreme refinements. Techniques that walked the razor's edge between ascension and crippling backlash. One mistake, and a cultivator could permanently shatter their foundation.
None of them were paths a rational person would take lightly.
Xuanyan had simply been… lucky.
The [Natural Charm] attribute, combined with timing, shared history, and Lingling's own emotional state, had allowed him to reach her heart with frightening efficiency. Even now, he could admit it honestly—without that absurd bonus and their pre-existing bond, things would not have unfolded so smoothly.
But Hei Yuling?
She wasn't just another woman.
She was a main female lead. A core figure in the original novel. Someone whose fate was deeply intertwined with Ye Qingfeng's rise. A future member of the protagonist's harem, protected by layers of narrative inertia so thick they might as well have been divine law.
Charm and luck alone wouldn't be enough.
And whatever tricks had worked on Lingling?
Trying them on Hei Yuling would probably get him killed.
Xuanyan exhaled slowly, the breath steady, controlled.
Then, deliberately, he stopped thinking about the future—and about the original novel altogether.
Since the moment he had appeared in this world, events had been shifting. Quietly at first. Then faster. Cause and effect no longer followed a fixed script. Outcomes no longer aligned cleanly with memory.
Trying to predict the future based on a story that was already breaking apart was nothing but wasted effort.
What happened with Bai Yulan yesterday had made that painfully clear. Another minor protagonist appearing outside expectations was not coincidence—it was a warning. A reminder that this world was no longer moving according to a story he could rely on. Carelessness, from this point onward, was no longer an option.
This wasn't fiction anymore, and he was no longer a reader observing safely from the outside. Everyone here was real—alive—and cultivators did not hesitate when it came to dealing with things they disliked. If someone became a problem, they erased it without hesitation. There was no drama in it, no moral hesitation—just efficiency and finality.
Schemes, protagonists, even Heaven itself meant nothing without power to support them. Ideals were fragile. Luck was unreliable. In the end, only absolute strength determined who lived freely and who was crushed into a stepping stone beneath someone else's feet. And that was where Xuanyan would focus from now on.
"System," he muttered aloud, his voice low and steady. "Show my status."